Lethality verus survivability
Inspired by the recent post about gun control, I wanted to talk about guns. More specifically, what guns do. It helps to nail down some basics before getting into higher-level discussions about gun policy. So what exactly do guns do? How should we talk about guns? I have a story.
Well, after years of study, I have determined that guns shoot bits of metal at things. Rather, guns shoot people. For instance, I point the gun-thing at that guy over there and a small bit of metal-stuff is propelled towards his general area, often involving some disruption of bodily integrity. More often than not, the small bit of metal misses completely as people are generally terrible at shooting when it doesn't involve a nice little range where everything is nice and neat, and your target isn't some piece of paper. Hell, all the hunters I know miss more deer than they hit. Shooting stuff is hard in the real world.
The question: does this ability to fling bits of metal in a general direction make you safer? I contend that it does not. I often find that people involved with metal-flinging most often find themselves harmed by other people's bits of metal flung in their general direction.
Personal protection these days seems to subsist on a blurring of lines between survivability and lethality. If you're very concerned about being shot, the best thing you can do is to lay down on the ground and put a bag over your head. 98 percent of all metal-bits flung out of gun-things are shot above waist-level, often in an ascending pattern. So hit the deck, and put a bag over your head. There you go, you've just increased your survivability by a whole bunch.
Do guns increase your chances of surviving a gun-shot? Not really. All the scientific evidence I've found suggests that being in the possession of a gun does little to nothing to mitigate the effects of having one's bodily integrity compromised by metal bits. It would seem that having a bag over your head is better, in that it prevents you from seeing possibly disturbing and traumatic things, and thus saving you a lot of psychological harm. In fact, I haven't found one case of someone being shot to death while wearing a bag over their head.
Do guns make your safer, or do guns just make you more able to use guns? I think that guns just make it easier for you to use guns. Gang-members, after all, are all about the guns, and they always end up dead for some strange reason, in spite of all the personal protection they have. Neither have I found any gang-member putting a bag over their head. I can find a pretty strong reverse-correlation between gun-deaths and a lack of bags-over-heads.
I have tried putting a bag over my head, and I can confidently assert that I've never been shot to death while doing so. Nor have I ever been robbed. This is because wearing a bag over your head implies that you lack any serious financial resources. If you had financial resources, you'd be wearing a very fancy bag over your head, and my experiments involve brown-paper grocery bags. DO NOT CUT EYE HOLES! This is very important.
Also of note: I can shoot just as accurately as any random person with a bag over my head. Weird how that works.
Well, after years of study, I have determined that guns shoot bits of metal at things. Rather, guns shoot people. For instance, I point the gun-thing at that guy over there and a small bit of metal-stuff is propelled towards his general area, often involving some disruption of bodily integrity. More often than not, the small bit of metal misses completely as people are generally terrible at shooting when it doesn't involve a nice little range where everything is nice and neat, and your target isn't some piece of paper. Hell, all the hunters I know miss more deer than they hit. Shooting stuff is hard in the real world.
The question: does this ability to fling bits of metal in a general direction make you safer? I contend that it does not. I often find that people involved with metal-flinging most often find themselves harmed by other people's bits of metal flung in their general direction.
Personal protection these days seems to subsist on a blurring of lines between survivability and lethality. If you're very concerned about being shot, the best thing you can do is to lay down on the ground and put a bag over your head. 98 percent of all metal-bits flung out of gun-things are shot above waist-level, often in an ascending pattern. So hit the deck, and put a bag over your head. There you go, you've just increased your survivability by a whole bunch.
Do guns increase your chances of surviving a gun-shot? Not really. All the scientific evidence I've found suggests that being in the possession of a gun does little to nothing to mitigate the effects of having one's bodily integrity compromised by metal bits. It would seem that having a bag over your head is better, in that it prevents you from seeing possibly disturbing and traumatic things, and thus saving you a lot of psychological harm. In fact, I haven't found one case of someone being shot to death while wearing a bag over their head.
Do guns make your safer, or do guns just make you more able to use guns? I think that guns just make it easier for you to use guns. Gang-members, after all, are all about the guns, and they always end up dead for some strange reason, in spite of all the personal protection they have. Neither have I found any gang-member putting a bag over their head. I can find a pretty strong reverse-correlation between gun-deaths and a lack of bags-over-heads.
I have tried putting a bag over my head, and I can confidently assert that I've never been shot to death while doing so. Nor have I ever been robbed. This is because wearing a bag over your head implies that you lack any serious financial resources. If you had financial resources, you'd be wearing a very fancy bag over your head, and my experiments involve brown-paper grocery bags. DO NOT CUT EYE HOLES! This is very important.
Also of note: I can shoot just as accurately as any random person with a bag over my head. Weird how that works.